GeotimesWeb
ExtraMonday, March
4, 2002$150
million for the geosciences

The University of Texas at Austin announced Saturday that it has received
what school officials are calling the largest monetary gift ever made to
a single public university. The lucky department? Geoscience.

Retired oilman and geologist John A. Jackson pledged a portion of his
estate to the university, also his alma mater. The gift is estimated to
currently be worth $150 million.

“I feel very humbled by a person of that much generosity. He's trying
to do something that will be beneficial for people long after he's gone
and I'm gone,” says William Fisher, a professor of geology at the university
and chair of the university’s Geology Foundation, which will manage the
donation.

The money will support the John A. and Katherine G. Jackson School of
Geosciences. Last year, Jackson donated $25 million to start the school,
which launched last summer.

“One of the biggest things we’re doing first is trying to put together
a more competitive package for graduate students,” Fisher says of the school.
“Our idea is to get the best students possible.”

The Geology Foundation, which currently holds $75 million, will also
fund post-doctoral research opportunities and the research of its faculty,
and will also support research faculty so that they can do more teaching,
Fisher says.

The foundation is also launching an initiative to research water issues
in the state, what Fisher calls a critical issue for Texas. It is the first
of many initiatives the school will pursue, he says.

Fisher adds that he and Jackson have been working together 20 years
on forming and funding the school, which combines the university’s Department
of Geological Sciences, the Geophysics Institute and the Texas Bureau of
Economic Geology.

With the guidance of an advisory council of 48 people representing the
energy industry, environmental industry, oil companies and the academic
community, the foundation will start planning now for how it will use the
gift, which it will receive upon Jackson's death.

“The focus is going to be to try to make it one of the best geological
organizations in the country,” Fisher says. “The big job is to measure
up to the kind of generosity that is in this gift.”